


The [World] Is Filled With People Who Love You

by lnles



Category: DCU (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics), Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Canon who?, Comfort No Hurt, Dreamsharing, F/M, Literal Sleeping Together, Titans who are and I cannot stress this enough no longer teens, empathic powers are always a little out of control, loneliness and longing transfigured into companionship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25795114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lnles/pseuds/lnles
Summary: With the team confined to the tower while the Justice League deals with a strange radiation storm bombarding the Earth, Raven struggles to keep her powers and her mind in check while enduring so much close social contact with others. She isn't sleeping well, and Gar would like to help her ease her mind.
Relationships: BB/Rae - Relationship, Beast Boy/Raven, Garfield Logan & Raven, Garfield Logan/Raven
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	The [World] Is Filled With People Who Love You

**Author's Note:**

> Like everything in my head comics-wise, this is constructed at random from bits of canon from every possible iteration of the Titans from their inception to now. Hence the presence of Jason a la the Titans show and the new 100-page-giants; Kyle Rayner, M'Gann M'Orzz, and Natasha Irons being recent members a la the recent Titans series; none of the Titans still being teenagers a la the passage of time we got in the post-Crisis universe until the goshdarn Nu52 debacle; and Raven and Cyborg being particularly good friends as in the cartoon (remember the episode where they fix his car together?). Don't think about it too hard.

Even in sleep, I cannot rest. I do not know peace. My dreams are porous, alien tendrils perpetually reaching in from the roiling subconscious outside my bedroom walls. Though I try to quiet my mind before bed every night, that only serves to press my own dreams flat, making room for the dreams of others to roll over my boundaries and fill my mind.

Here is a dream I tried to have recently: Kori, Donna, and I are walking the streets of San Francisco on a warm, sunny day. I am glad to be there, I always am, and we are enjoying the sun on our bare arms and the sight and sound of many people around us. Suddenly Donna turns to me and says “It’s time, Raven! We don’t want to be late!”. She takes flight, then Kori after her, and so I follow them, letting my soul-self bear me up past the rooftops. Nothing about this is so very unusual. Among Titans, flight is as good as feet for travel.

We are sailing across the clear blue sky, Donna leading, Kori and I following. Kori twirls through the air, her hair spiraling behind her in an incandescent trail of flame. I do not twirl. I do not think I have ever twirled in my life. I do allow myself to uncoil. My soul-self broadens, extending the footprint of my being with great black wings. The air sings through them. I am not sure where Donna is taking us, but I do not care. I am not afraid.

Donna looks back at us and smiles with true joy. “We’re almost there!”

I have not yet been able to finish this dream. I do not know where there is.

As soon as Donna speaks, we are swallowed by darkness. All around us echoing, crying, desperate calls for “Dad”. I wonder idly which of my friends has birthed this dream. The sad fact is that almost any resident of Titans Tower could provide it. The pain is searing in its familiarity, long bloated and festering. I do not know whose it is.

We land on a great empty plain. I am no longer steering myself. I look to my left, my right, and find Donna and Kory are gone. I am alone but for a great glowing growth at the heart of this place. It hums with a throbbing rot. It is an old wound.

I approach the monstrous growth and, almost against my will, place my hand against it.

I know this pain now. It belongs to Dick. He came to the Tower today just to check on us, just to see if we are doing alright, and decided to spend the night. His sleep is as troubled as mine. Perhaps he does not ever really rest either.

This pain is a knot, just as old and sour as it smells. A twisted mix of all the times he has seen Bruce fall and that first terrible heartbreaking fall, the fall that took the Flying Graysons from him. Now that his conscious mind is in the shackles of sleep, the pain can run wild.

I alleviate it, letting the pain run out of his mind and into mine. I have consumed this particular suffering an uncountable number of times, and I do not resent doing so again. But it exhausts me as it rolls through my soul-self and into the magical recesses of my being, where it will eventually burn itself out.

I sense Dick’s mind loosen and relax, deep sleep wrapping around him. I step back from his pain, which is now a silent, cool stone. Spent lava stilled. With one step I am gone from here, falling back into infinite nothing, and then my own body. I lie awake the rest of the night, and eventually pick up a book.

The sun rises over the bay, beautiful as ever, sparkling on the water. The air has a particularly orange tinge, a lovely consequence of the first flood of radiation driving into Earth’s atmosphere. I stand in the window, allowing the rays of light to wash over me like waves until I become too warm, and step away. I know that the protective coating on the glass will insulate me against the effects of these rays. I know that a Green Lantern is posted in the high atmosphere to filter out the worst of it. Yet the heat and the light touch some little flowering of fear inside me. I have seen enough of the effects of this radiation during Justice League reserve briefings.

Outside my door I feel points of lights blossoming everywhere in the tower as my friends awaken. There is Dick, feeling especially well-rested, getting ready to head back to the Watchtower, Kori with him. Then Donna, Jason, Garfield, all in quick succession, moving from their various rooms to find each other in the kitchen and eat. They are the devotees of breakfast in our little family, always conjuring new loaded toasts or stuffed omelettes from the deepest reaches of the internet. I do not usually join them, but sometimes Garfield will bring me little things to try. He likes it so much when I enjoy what he makes, it sparks off him like fireworks, and is just as wondrous.

Part of me hopes he will come today. Most of me hopes no one will come to see me at all. I am so tired.

Garfield does not come to see me with breakfast. I hear his feelings bounce up and down like a rubber ball as he jokes with Jason and Donna, reaching up for highs of humor and fun to cover for something else, something tightening his nerves like a bolt. I cannot determine what it is, and I have to let it go.

I hear my friends go about their days, although with nowhere to go unless summoned to the Watchtower or the Hall of Justice, every day is quiet for every one of us.

I miss Victor. He has moved on to a reward richly deserved, respected and honored like the great hero, the great man, he is, but I do miss him often. He was steady beyond all else. His feelings never infringed on mine. I always asked before I probed. We could sit together for hours, working on some small project, and never need more than ten or twenty words.

Without him, when I am in a mood like I am now, I tend to simply remain alone. I eat a granola bar from the stockpile in my desk, I wash, I dress. Nothing fancy. Nothing tactical. Even supervillains are doing very little right now. Catastrophe borne from no one’s grand design or evil scheme, but plain ugly chance, has put the fear in them like it has the rest of us. Until the League turns back the coming radiation storm, no one can stomach the thought of stepping outside, even to add to the chaos. Waiting is all there is.

I meditate. My mind is not storm-tossed or boiling with confusion, but it is twisted into knots, and I must begin to unpick them. The ironic consequence of not getting out to use my power on villains and bystanders is that it is more likely than ever to burst forth when I am tired, stressed, or suffering. I must be extra careful now when building the supports that hold my being up.

When I am meditating, minutes and hours seem of equal length, pouring over me in a waterfall, dropping away beneath me into infinity. My thoughts bubble up and then burst, their contents dissipating into nothingness. It is easy to exist like this, a cul-de-sac of unspoken ideas and unconsidered feelings, but it is not pleasurable. This is a distinction I have found hard to explain to others. For most people, ease and comfort go hand, their easiest self also their most comfortable one, their most honest one. For me, it is not like that at all. I strive at every minute to keep my powers in check, and I have done so for so long that it has become second nature, my default state. I do not enjoy it. Every moment wears at me. I wish to speak, to shout, to dance, to let my inner world unfold out and out and out to blanket the wide world. In a way, it is the same tyrannical desire that drives my father. I wish to consume everything and shape it beneath my hands so it suits me better.

That is not acceptable, and I know it. Instead I fold this desire into smaller and smaller squares until it might fit in a locket or a pocket, and store it behind topless walls. I build these walls through meditation.

I am laying bricks one-by-one, another barrier to bury myself when there is a knock at my door. The best thing about meditation is that turning inward silences the wash of emotion that comes from everyone nearby. That same blessed insensitivity makes it very easy to sneak up on me.

I unfold my tangled, languid limbs, and go to the door, already feeling Garfield behind it. There is a shadow over his heart, but he is trying gamely to chase it away. He would have to chase it much farther to remove it from my sight.

The door slides open with the tap of a button, and he is there before me, holding a plate in one hand, the other already tugging on his ear. A familiar nervous tic. It is comforting to see. Comforting to be able to rely on the cycles of his mind and body.

I do love him.

I must not say so.

I beckon for him to enter, and he steps through the doorway, tapping the control panel behind him. We are here together, and though closing a door does nothing to separate me from the endless chatter of other minds, it adds an intimate tone to our time together.

He offers me the plate. “You didn’t come to breakfast or lunch, so I thought maybe you’d like some dinner.”

Startled, I glance at the clock. It is nearly six in the evening. As I said, time becomes porous and useless during meditation. “Thank you, Garfield.” I take the plate and sit on the edge of my bed. He follows me and sits beside me, closer than an ordinary friend but too far to touch accidentally.

The food smells good. I remember the scent from a meal some weeks ago, a recipe he has been perfecting. Spicy tofu with black bean garlic sauce, bok choy, and soft white rice. It is hard to go wrong starting from such surefire ingredients, and Garfield is actually a very good cook. He enjoys the improvisation of it. The same fondness for spontaneous variation makes him a terrible baker.

His passion for change is what I admire most about him. He can become a bird, a bear, and a binturong in the space of a minute and still not lose the thread of who he is. I cannot expand my wardrobe beyond blue and black without feeling as though I am starting to spin out across the ice.

Garfield watches me eat, which is less creepy than it sounds, because he is also telling me of the movies he and Jason watched today, the video games he has been playing, everything he plans to do when we can resume the old patterns of our lives. Underneath that, I can sense the force of his attention following the fork from the food to my mouth, attending to my every expression, my pleasure. I appreciate it. The food is delicious as ever, and I realize I have been hungry for hours, the need buried under layers of peaceful inattention.

“This is very good. Thank you,” I say, setting the plate on my desk and returning to the bed. “How many recipes for tofu do you know now?”

Garfield laughed. “More than fifty, less than a thousand. But I’ll make it there eventually.” With a sudden flourish of rock star posture, he grins and says “Don’t believe me? Just watch!”

The reference is dated, the song years old. I shake my head and do not favor him with a laugh. “If you will continue to make my dinner free of charge, I will continue to watch.”

“That sounds like a fair enough deal to me.” Garfield draws up his knees to his chest, resting his chin on them. Sadness arrives on the shores of his soul, and I wonder if I am about to discover the source of his nervousness earlier in the day. He notices the change in my attention to him as surely as I noticed the change in his mood. “Sorry, Rae. It’s been a boring day, but a long one.”

“What is bothering you?” I watch his heart and his face equally for a clue.

“I called Rita today. They’re struggling over there. You wouldn’t think so, since none of the DP ever go out much anyway, but they’re...you know how they are. Whatever goes on in the world gets chewed up and spat out in their heads somehow.” He sighs long and heavy. “I’m worried about them, but I can’t take responsibility for them either. They’re on the other side of the country.”

“And they are adults, as are you.” I touch his arm. It is only through an incredible effort that I do not swallow his pain there and then. I leave it in place, trying to offer the normal sort of comfort. He is after all an adult, as are the members of the Doom Patrol, as am I, and so we ought to be able to talk to each other without these overwhelming pressures eating our thoughts and our words.

His face is open, he is looking to me for guidance, me of all people, so I go on. “You give them your time and your attention, most importantly your love. What more can any of us do?”

“You’re right, like usual.” He covers my hand with his own, holding us together with the bridge I have created. “It does help to talk to you, even when you don’t use your powers. You know that, right?”

“You say it often, so I feel as though I cannot object,” I tell him, leavening the sourness of the sentiment by squeezing his arm lightly. The hair on his arms, on all of his body, is so much softer than it ought to be. It should insulate him, but if anything it makes him radiate out comfort instead.

Quick as a Flash he is no longer a man but a twisting whirl of fur and miniscule bright claws, slipping up my arm and across my shoulders, draping himself against my neck. The sensation is fiery in its pleasure, the hair on my neck standing up in response, and then my arms and legs following suit. I am sure he can sense it. My body’s answer to his is as obvious as skywriting to his black button ermine eyes.

Garfield squirms against my skin, lifting his face to my ear. His claws rest lightly on the skin of my cheek. Their delicacy does not fool me. Like all of his forms, they are just as dangerous as the real thing. The pinprick risk of them now is as stimulating as the silken fur sliding along my neck.

“You should pay more attention to your needs, Rae. You can’t starve just because you’re nervous about being around everyone.”

One mistake many people make about Garfield and his animal forms is to think that his voice becomes high or cute. It is the opposite, the natural consequence of inhuman bodies speaking human words: words shredded by effort, often guttural and hoarse. His ermine’s voice is not quite so harsh, but it does hiss into my ear.

I reach up, take his twisting body in my hands. Holding him before me I meet his glistening eyes. They do have a certain appeal in this form. It always surprises me that they are not green but ink-dark. They reflect a part of him that is rarely visible to others.

“It is not about nerves only. If I lose control it will hurt everyone. It could drive you mad.” I glance away. In a way I am lying, for it is all about nerves on some level. It is about the control I have over my nerves, about the limits I can place on my feelings, and those of others. It is about how others make me feel. It is often about how he makes me feel. Even the half-lie is exhausting, and I cannot hide that from him.

My hands are empty, and now a green butterfly perches on my knuckle, wings beating gently, the air wafting over my skin in infinitesimal gusts. “Have you been sleeping enough? Are you still seeing our dreams?”

“Yes.” It is nice to admit to something. There is care even in the delicate pressure of his butterfly feet, shifting to balance his non-existent weight. Victor once tried to answer the question of where Garfield’s mass goes when he becomes something so small. It is one of the few times I ever saw Victor’s anger push its way to the surface. It was not nearly so scary as the anger of most others. He spoke it into frustration and profanity, and we laughed.

Garfield’s hundred-faceted eyes are still watching me expectantly, so I return to the conversation at hand. I also let a little of the memory slip out, enough to touch his mind with the humor of the moment. I do not consider it true interference. It is just a reminder of better times.

“I have been seeing others’ pain in my dreams. With so many of us home all day, the barriers get weak and it becomes hard to stay impenetrable. I have not slept well in a long time.”

“Do you think-” Garfield cuts himself off to take flight, landing on the bed no longer a butterfly but a cat, pacing his way across the comforter. “Do you think I could help with that?”

I know what he is suggesting, and it scares me. “Your mind has plenty of turmoil of its own. I am not certain you could shield me rather than smother me.”

His cat face crumples. My doubt has hurt him, and that hurt rebounds back to me and then to him again, ping-ponging back and forth, more hurtful each time.

I force myself to focus and catch it on the third rebound, swallowing it whole. Deep down in my soul-self I sense it mingling with Dick’s own trauma, becoming a more potent stew of bad feeling. I must take care not to let it breed within me. Its malignancy is certain, and pain always is virulent, even sealed up in my soul.

A soft cheek rubs against the heel of my hand. Garfield is still there, a feline unfazed by the feedback loop that had us in its jaws only seconds ago. “I can handle myself, Rae. I promise. If you’re uncomfortable or it gets too hard, just tell me and I’ll go.”

The temptation is overwhelming. He and I have spoken circles around this idea before, and I have fantasized about it in greater detail on my own, as should surprise no one. A mind right next to my own, one cool and collected, without the seethe of open wounds: I could fall into such a mind, use it as insulation against the rest of the world while I slept. I could rest for real.

The danger lies in the possibility of the shield mind slipping into turmoil while I slept. Immersed in someone else’s consciousness, I could broadcast their pain or my own out to the world unknowingly, an ironic reversal of my usual entrapment in the dreams of others.

When he is a cat, Garfield’s eyes are green and familiar. They are as reflective as a mirror, and I catch a glimpse of my own face there. I look starved and strained, skin stretched tight across sharp bones. I even see my own eyes there in his, and they are hungry. I am hungry.

“I am...willing to try.” I rub the cat’s head, and then scratch beneath his chin. Garfield purs uproariously. I have long known better than to point out the humorous coincidence of a man named Garfield spending time as a cat, but I do let a little of the amusement leach out from my fingertips. It is enough for him to enjoy without knowing its source.

“Before we do anything, though, I must get ready for bed,” and with one last rough stroke down his spine I stand, brushing the green cat hairs off on my clothes.

Garfield curls into a puddle of fur on the bedspread. “I’ll be here.”

I leave him behind and retreat into my bathroom, going through the motions of my bedtime rituals without much conscious thought at all. My mind is scanning the tower, checking to see who is at home, who is at risk. It is a silly impulse, because of course everyone is at home. There is simply nowhere else for them to go. Even Kori is back from the Watchtower, without Dick. I find her in the greenhouse and linger over her emotions. When she gardens, she is a well of peace, and in my hands I can feel the rough handle of the trowel she wields, the soft dirt between her fingers. It is lovely.

But I cannot linger too long, or I begin to drain the sensation away, which would leave Kori numb to all the beauty around her, the beauty she works so hard to cultivate.

I pull on my pajamas, though there is so little difference between them and the clothes I wore today that I wonder why I bother. I brush my teeth and then my hair, and return to my room.

Surprisingly, Garfield is no longer a cat. He is sprawled across the sheets, a man again, gazing at a spot in the air just before the ceiling. Like me, he has abandoned the wardrobe strictures of our heroic existence, and wears a loose t-shirt and shorts, white and red as his uniform. I miss the days when he would dress up, his fondness for loud patterned shirts that clashed brilliantly with his skin.

He hears me step into the room and rolls onto his side, meeting my eyes. His expression is almost shy, and I reach out for the thread of his feelings. There I find a startling lack of desperation, anger, fear, or resentment, the emotions which always stalk him after a conversation with his first family. He is remarkably cool. Only a slight stripe of nervousness wends its way through his head right now, and it is the fear of me. Of disappointing me, or failing.

Knowing that he is nervous, that the stakes include Garfield’s feelings, that makes me a little more nervous too, but I also know that backing out now would hurt him more than trying, so I have to press on. Longing gnaws at me, a hunger for comfort and sleep. Garfield is so accommodating with his body and his feelings.

I climb into the bed. It is spacious enough, with room for both of us, but I decide that boldness has its rewards and curl in beside him. There is a place for me in the crook of his elbow, and for once I feel small beside him, even though we are nearly the same height. A soft hand on my shoulder, a warm body next to mine: already the stimulation is difficult to digest, and it sets all my nerves buzzing. Nonetheless, I lean into him, resting my head on his shoulder. He is very warm, a concentrated muddle of bubbling primordial energy.

“Now what?” he asks, half-whispering with a kind of strange solemnity.

“I will try to go to sleep,” I reply, casting a skeptical gaze up at him from my place at his shoulder. “You will try to remain placid as I descend out of consciousness.”

“I can do that.” He says this with a surprising amount of confidence, so much so that for a moment I believe him. Perhaps he will be as strong an anchor as I hope.

I close my eyes and discover how tired I am. Sleep is already tugging at my hand, inviting me to follow Kori and Donna again.

The feelings that would normally begin seeping into my mind from all the cracks and corners are muffled. The gentle rhythm of Garfield’s breath and heart, the glassy smooth surface of his thoughts, the comforting heat of his body, they defend me against the raging minds of those I love most.

About to follow Kori and Donna into the land outside waking, I turn back, caught by a sudden impulse. Normally I would never allow myself an impulse at all, but every rule has come down this night, and I feel abnormally safe doing whatever I want while ensconced in Garfield’s protective aura.

I reach out and pull Garfield into the dream with me. He looks startled, not by the dreaming, but by my hand in his, the smile on my face. It is only a little one, but more than I am usually willing to give away. I realize he must be near sleep too, standing here on the precipice between wakefulness and dreams with me. Together we will go over the edge, and discover if this experiment really works.

“Are you ready?” I ask him.

“Not sure I’ve ever been ready for anything, now that you mention it.” He tugs me forward, changing our places, both his feet planted in the world of dreams while I hesitate just outside. “Let’s go.”

We walk into the vision together, and I finally find out where my sleeping mind was trying to take me these many nights.

Donna guides us to the dream’s heart, all of us taking to the air once again, skimming over the skyscrapers and flitting between the clouds. When we land, it is not a place of pain. It is a room, open to the sky as the logic of dreams dictates, and it is full of people we love. Victor steps forward to welcome us as Donna and Kori guide us in. Dick, Wally, Tim and Cassie and Conner, Lilith, newer friends like M’Gann and Natasha, they gather around us and show us into the party. The occasion is unknown, unmentioned, but it is a happy one. We know because every way we turn there is more fun to be had, games and food and laughter. I can almost forget it is a dream, this blur of good feeling, except for Garfield, close at my arm, reminding me with his solid presence of what is real.

“Hey, this is a good party. I didn’t think you had something like this in you,” he whispers to me, smiling with one fang catching the flickering light.

“Dreams reveal more than we are even conscious of,” I tell him, and to my surprise I smile back, much broader and more honest than I ever have in the waking world. He catches my new openness and offers it back with an outstretched hand.

“If you’re feeling that good, maybe we should push our luck a little. Want to dance?”

I hesitate. I do not dance, firstly. More importantly, I do not willingly step into situations I know will drive my emotions to new peaks and drop them into new valleys. I live on the even and the steady. That is what longing is: a reliable ache. It never goes away. It never gets very much worse or very much better.

When longing ends, what rushes in to fill the vacuum?

This is a dream, though, and the temptation is so great, the taste of indulgence so sweet even in mere anticipation, that I cannot resist.

I take Garfield’s hand, and let him draw me into the dance. His palm is warm and smooth, accepting my perpetually cold fingers without recoiling.

Because this is a dream, the music is strangely just out of hearing or conscious knowing, an echo of every song I have heard in the last five or ten years. Yet it is not cacophonous or unpleasant. It swirls through the air, and makes me feel drowsy and satisfied. Though I do not dance, which is my way of saying I do not know how to dance, I do try, letting the melody catch my body and carry it this way and that. I am trying to follow Garfield’s movements, but he is being intentionally difficult, throwing in flourishes and acrobatic touches that I cannot even begin to imitate.

His delight sparkles forth from within, and I discover he is doing this to amuse me. To entertain me. Of course he is, that is who he is, but still to know it for certain gratifies me. I watch him perform a particularly elaborate twist, which he ends without warning by becoming a twisting python, arcing through the air, rolling coils curling to the floor. It is a graceless landing, a series of fleshy thuds.

The sight is so strange and funny, this collapsing reptile, that I laugh, all joy rushing to the top of my lungs and singing out. In the dream the air grows thick with my laugh, condensing around us in rippling sheets like the aurora.

Garfield looks up at me from the floor, a man again, and he is so happy, so delighted that I wonder why I did not allow this earlier. Why I did not embrace it from the first.

What is longing when what you want is right before you?

The ground beneath me shatters. It dissolves into ash and I am sliding down a hill of this ash into a gathering storm. Faster and farther, faster and farther I slide, and at the bottom of the hill I feel the others in the Tower right now, their minds vulnerable to the bomb of joy about to go off in the place they thought safest: their own minds. Perhaps I would only cheer them up. Or perhaps I would break their minds, turn their own thoughts and feelings to dust. I am about to find out.

I want to fly, to avoid falling into the minds of my friends while bearing this dangerously bright light, but I cannot. I am rushing ever closer to the critical moment. There is no turning back.

“Raven!”

Garfield’s voice comes from shockingly close by. I look for him on either side of me and see no one. Then I look before me and see the green hummingbird that hovers there. Anyone might mistake him for the real thing. All he lacks is the jewel-like chest. He is somehow as iridescent as a true bird, glittering even in this lightless place.

“Raven, let me catch you!” He buzzes close to my face, the words vibrating against my skin.

“It is not safe! You cannot handle all of this emotion at once! It could kill you!” I say this in a rush, emphasizing the wrong syllables at the wrong times, words sludging up against each other. Fear is stirring my mind into a mess, making the eventual release of all this feeling even more dangerous.

“Together we can handle it! I promise!” He becomes himself again, and now he is falling just below me, as we speed together toward the vortex of unprotected thought filling the rest of the Tower.

“I am afraid!” There is no time like the present to be honest.

“Me too!” He offers his hands to me one more time, and I have to choose.

Really it is no choice at all. I take them and fall forward into him. Everything that I contain breaks against him before we reach our friends’ minds, and we are blinded in an all-consuming glow. The joy of it is exquisite, and the pain. My mind and his are interleaved and chaotic, my joy and anger and sadness and apathy and love washing over us in great waves. I am afraid we will both be destroyed by the terrible fullness of it. I never allowed any part of myself even half this freedom and now suddenly all dams are broken. The great flood has arrived.

I fear obliteration. I cannot see, cannot hear. But I can still feel his hands in mine. They are holding tightly and will not let go. For that sensation alone, I force myself not to fear, not to fight. I am pressed by my own feeling until I think I will die. I do not let go.

Time passes. Centuries, perhaps, or at the very least decades. He and I have turned to stone, been forgotten, are relics of a bygone era, gawked at by schoolchildren and otherwise forgotten. Surely this cannot have happened in any lesser amount of time. Surely we have been at my mercy for an eternity.

My vision clears. The world is shadowy. A clearing on a starry night. Cool air and soft sounds. I lie across Garfield’s chest, shifting with the rise and fall of his breath. I sit up, knees planted on either side of him. I ignore the suggestion of it. I am irritated that this purge of feeling did not take any of my more inconvenient desires with it.

At my movement he looks up, eyes shiny and attentive. His face is flushed dark grey-green, and his breath is fast and shallow. “You’re awake. Well, in a manner of speaking.”

I look around again. It scares me that I am somewhere I do not know, but the place itself is welcoming. Comfortable, even. “Is this still the dream? Are we conscious?”

He shrugs. “How do you figure conscious or not at this point? This is still a dream. But we’ve apparently left your head and entered mine. This is a place only I know.”

“What about the others? Did I hurt them?”

Garfield smiles, brushes the hair from my face. It is a loving gesture, one only he has ever done for me. Not even my mother could bear to touch me when I was a child. “They’re safe. I woke up for a little bit when your spell was ending, and they were all logged in to the Tower mainframe. Just watching movies and passing time.”

I stretch my mind out, probing the edges of this dream. It is very small, its dimensions bounded to the clearing’s edge and no farther. Outside of that space I encounter the sprawl of Garfield’s consciousness, and beyond him I find the material world, and in it our friends. Their hearts and minds beat normally. They know nothing of what we just endured. We two swallowed it on our own.

I withdraw my senses and return them inward, settling within the confines of this dream world. It is not uncomfortable. Quite the opposite.

Garfield is propped up on his elbows, and I am reminded that this is a very intimate position to share with someone, your own body stretched across theirs, your own legs holding them against you.

“Feel better?” He asks, oblivious to the heat and fear that stir within me.

“Marginally,” I say with such sarcasm that he laughs, the bounce of delight in his chest jostling me as well. My heart thumps faster than it has in years, blood rushing to the tips of my fingers and the ends of my toes. For once I too am warm.

I rest my hands on the grass on either side of Garfield. It is verdant and soft, welcoming to my touch. “This is a beautiful place.”

He smiles up at the stars and they glisten back, reflected in his eyes. “Yeah. It’s not far from DP headquarters. I used to go here when I didn’t want to go home. The animals didn’t seem to notice that I was a little out of the ordinary.” He meets my eyes, and his smile stays. “It’s nice to be here with someone else.”

“It is.” I should be utterly exhausted, drained of feeling after what happened, but I am driven on by an inner flame which I have long kept tamped down. Now it is newly fed and burning higher than ever. I am enjoying this far too much.

“It’s especially nice,” Garfield speaks again, but this time he is quiet and he does not look at me. “To be here with you.” He shifts under me, sitting up all the way now, our faces and our bodies so close that to actually touch would be less intimate. Now that he is upright, he no longer needs to support himself and so his arms are free, half-raised like an unfinished embrace.

I do not need my powers to know what he wants to ask, will ask if I do not intervene.

I do not exactly intervene, but I do act first. It is against my instincts, against what you might call the better angels of my nature, but then again I am not of the angels’ party, and I never will be.

I lean forward, falling into him just as I did before, but without the accompanying great and terrible burst of sensation. This time the sensation is very subtle, almost undetectable, the soft reverberations of his heart now so much closer to mine. “We should stay here tonight,” I whisper against his neck. The whole weight of me rests along him, and he does not flinch or quiver. He closes his arms around me, as he always intended.

We are our own knot, tied tight and painless.

When I wake up in the morning, I am momentarily uncertain if this is the real world or another part of the dream. It is my room, so that is a mark in its favor. Garfield is beside me on the bed. For most of his life, he has slept fitfully, animated by the many thousands of beings dwelling in his very DNA, but now he looks peaceful and still, his clothing crumpled, the hair on one side of his body pressed flat from sleep. This also suggests that I have returned to the waking world. If I were still asleep, I am sure he would still be with me.

Tentatively, I expand my senses, feeling for the other lives in the Tower. It is late already, because Donna and Kori are already up and about, taking an inventory of supplies in the storage room. Jason is cleaning, a surprise I wish I could share with Garfield, and I am touched by the simple pleasure Jason finds as he sets each clean dish on the drying rack.

I expand a little further, taking in the people of San Francisco on the far side of the bay. At this distance, their concerns are faint but poignant. There is a great deal of fear. Though the Justice League is not far from the heart of the storm now, sure to redirect it or defeat it or do whatever it takes to save us all, it is hard to stay optimistic when the sky grows redder by the hour. I extend my soul-self as far as it will go, brushing up against these fearful minds, and offer them a measure of contentment. A very, very small amount, but enough to soothe if only for a little while.

This effort does not even exhaust me and, emboldened by this newfound energy, I reach out again, stretching as far as I can, until I touch certain half-familiar minds, distant though they are.

In Gotham, there is Tim, his brothers and sisters too, gathered in their dark and luxurious lair, waiting for their father’s word.

In Metropolis, Natasha is repairing her armor, alert for the moment when the League needs her iron mind to forge an exceptional device to end this crisis.

On Themyscira, guarded by an arcane dome, Cassie watches the skies and wonders if her mother and her mortal friends are safe in Man’s World.

At the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, Kyle lingers in a liminal place, holding the whole planet in an emerald embrace, filtering out as much of the radiation as he can.

I know none of them but Cassie closely, but still I offer them a little shred of peace too. A reminder that even the waiting matters.

Only Cassie recognizes the touch of my mind. She looks into the sky, still deep black above Paradise Island, and whispers “Thank you, Raven.” Her gratitude is enough to carry my soul-self back to my room in Titans Tower.

Beside me, Garfield stirs, shifting a few times, stretching like a cat awakening from a long nap before he opens his eyes, though only halfway, and looks at me. Curiosity flickers through him, and beneath that a humble desire, a sort of longing, to know that I am well.

“Did we actually sleep? I’m kind of unclear as to what happened in the real world and what happened in the dream zone.” He is covering his concern with humor, but it twists within him, reaching out to me. Behind his jokes, his heart is pleading for good news.

I am happy to be able to give it to him. Not dangerously happy, not with my mind still in disarray, but happier than I have been in a long time. “I did sleep. It looks like you did too.”

He laughs, shifting onto his back, arching his spine with a yawn. “Yeah, now that you say it I feel pretty good.” The concern comes back, this time more urgent. “You feel okay too, I hope.”

“I feel quite well, Garfield. Don’t trouble yourself. For once I did rest easy.” I stretch out, lifting myself on my elbows to hover above him, look him eye to eye. “I have you to thank for that.” Before I can possibly think better of it, before I can remember why this is all forbidden, I ask the question that is most pressing in my mind. "May I kiss you?"

His face breaks into such sly delight that I almost regret the question. "So respectful, I do declare I am touched." He giggles, his own impression driving him to greater amusement.

Before I can complain, however, he lets the joke fall away, only the smile remaining. "By which I mean, you may."

He waits for me, eyes so bright and watchful. In them I see my face reflected, and deeper than that I see all my feeling from the night before, unleashed in that one great burst, now immortalized in his heart.

I press my lips to his. The intensity of the experience is an order of magnitude greater here in the material, sensual world. Dreams only echo life, and they cannot capture its finer details.

I do love him. Now he knows. That fact passes between us like a spark along a synapse. We are two parts of a being so much larger than ourselves that it cannot even be seen, except in times like this.

For a moment, just a second or two, I do know peace. I invite the moment to stretch on into an eternity.

It does.

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the song that lent itself to the title: https://youtu.be/qj44UWV2OjI  
> It's a weird one, I know.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I enjoyed writing it :) (and then rewriting it and rewriting it and rewriting it and)


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